First off, respect for admitting your ignorance and asking for help. Most people won't do that so readily.

Second, parrying can be better than dodging, but it's situational. Parrying is absolutely a good skill to have in your back pocket, though. Figuring out what can be parried is a matter of either scouring the wikis or simple trial and error. I would say just use whatever you're most comfortable with. I beat Dark Souls 1-3 without ever trying to learn to parry, I only started figuring it out on subsequent playthroughs when I came back a little bit older (and after playing Sekiro, where it's like 1/3 of the entire gameplay experience).

Third, poise can be broken by any kind of weapon. It's all dependent on how much poise damage the weapon does vs. how much poise your opponent has. Poise damage isn't displayed on the weapon info screen, so it's something you kind of have to intuit. If I got any of that wrong (as poise changes from game to game and I get them mixed up sometimes), someone please correct me.